Repelled Attack, Iraq Says; Iran Reactor Reported Hit

Iraq said Tuesday that its forces have repelled a ground offensive launched by Iran along the central sector of their seven-year-old battlefront.

A military communique released in Baghdad said that three Iranian infantry battalions had attacked Iraqi positions 75 miles east of Baghdad and that the attackers were repulsed with heavy losses.

Also on Tuesday, the Iranian media reported that Iraqi warplanes earlier in the day raided a partially completed Iranian nuclear power plant, killing 11 people, including a West German engineer. The plant’s construction, initiated by a West German company, was interrupted by the Iranian revolution of 1979, but the project is still under West German supervision.

Tehran radio said the plant, in the northern Persian Gulf port of Bushehr, contained nuclear material, and the broadcast warned that the attack might result in a release of radioactivity. The Iranians added that the International Atomic Energy Agency has been asked to send a team of experts to monitor the damage.

Expanding on the report of a repelled Iranian offensive, the Iraqi communique said, “Large numbers of enemy corpses are still littering the valleys in the area.”

Iran reported no unusual activity on the central front, and it was not possible to independently verify the Iraqi claims. The two nations have been at war since September, 1980.

The ground attack was the first reported Iranian offensive in several months. Both sides usually forgo ground fighting in the area during the summer months because of the intense heat, which makes it unbearable for soldiers to sit for long in tanks.

Western diplomats have been reporting increased signs of Iranian preparations for an offensive, but most of the activity has been concentrated around the southern Iraqi city of Basra, which the Iranians besieged in January. Forward Iranian positions are less than 10 miles from the city.

“Iraq’s armed forces are always on full alert, and the world should not blame us if our troops completely crush the Iranian forces in a cemetery,” Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Abdul-Jabbar Muhsen was quoted as saying.

In the past, the Iranians have launched attacks on several fronts in the apparent hope of catching the Iraqis off guard along their lengthy frontier, as they did in 1985, when the Iranians succeeded in capturing the Iraqi town of Al Faw.

The Iranians said their forces shot down an attacking Iraqi jet Tuesday, but it was not clear if the warplane was involved in the Bushehr attack.

A broadcast on Baghdad radio, with patriotic songs being played in the background, made no mention of attacking a nuclear facility, saying only that Iraqi jets attacked a chemical complex in Bushehr.

‘Brave Falcons’

“The brave falcons returned safe after destroying the storage of evil directed against our Arab nation, after they destroyed the complex that Iran had strived to construct since the era of the shah,” President Saddam Hussein said in a congratulatory cable to the commander of his air force.

The Bushehr plant had been attacked several times in the past, including a raid in March, 1985, in which the Iraqis fired Exocet missiles at the complex but apparently did little damage.

The Iranian radio reports said the slain West German was Juergen Friedrich, who worked for the West German Atomic Energy Enterprise, which supervises the plant.

Late Tuesday, Iraq’s military command said its warplanes attacked “a large naval target,” Baghdad’s term for a tanker, off the Iranian coast, the 13th shipping attack reported by Iraq in a week.

A military spokesman said the ship was “accurately and effectively” hit and that all aircraft returned safely to base.